


How Captain America abandoned his title during CA:CW

by magicalcrapulent



Category: Captain America (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (Marvel Movies)
Genre: Analysis, Captain America: Civil War (Movie), I Wrote This Instead of Sleeping, I have feelings about this movie, I should have worked on one of my many term papers, I started analyzing, Meta, Sokovia Accords, and I have an opinion that I want to bring across, and about this characters, and then it spiralled out of control, just in case you're wondering, movie analysis, this is basically my take on why CA:CW was such a mess
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-15
Updated: 2018-04-15
Packaged: 2019-04-23 11:20:59
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,971
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14331363
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/magicalcrapulent/pseuds/magicalcrapulent
Summary: I wrote this analysis in my head one morning after waking up. It started with the symbolism of the pens and then I spend an hour writing this in head first before writing it down. It's not really a ff, but I thought that I could share it anyway.





	How Captain America abandoned his title during CA:CW

Okay guys, hear me out! Captain America: Civil War is not about the Sokovia Accords or an argument between Steve and Tony. It’s much more than that underneath the surface. It’s about Steve’s abandonment of his Captain America persona. And this is how it goes:

What does Captain America stand for? Democracy and freedom. He is/was the ideal human being in terms of Nazi standards: big, blonde, blue eyes, intelligent, the perfect soldier. And he punched Hitler in the face. Why? Because it’s the right thing to do. Steve acts on the premise that what he does is good and right, because that’s what he’s been doing all this time since WW2, that’s why he was chosen for Project: Rebirth in the first place: because of his inherent goodness, and Steve delivered (rightfully so). He is used to do what is good and right, because that’s who he is, that’s what _Captain America_ is, what he stands for: The Good Fight.

And then the Accords came. Suddenly somebody tells him that he was acting out of order, that his actions may not be as positive as he was led to believe. Of course he denies it for a while, but CA:CW is not really about the Accords, at least not for Steve. But by brushing those Accords aside he also starts brushing aside everything he stands for: Democracy and freedom. 117 nations decided that the Avengers couldn’t continue the way they were doing. 117 nations decided that they had enough of having an American team of ‘superheroes’ just come into their country, cause mayhem and then disappear again, leaving those nations in shambles, all in the name of the greater good. They had enough, and they used their rights and freedoms to do something against it. They stood up and said “It’s enough”. By denying those nations’ right to say ‘No’, by saying “The safest hands are our own”, by claiming everybody in a position of power is (basically)corrupt and has a secret agenda, Steve denies those countries’ freedom and democratic rights.

Steve is not completely wrong. He has personal experience with hidden agendas. Negative experiences. We have seen it in The Avengers and CA:TWS. SHIELD has, on multiple occasions, withheld information and had their own secret agenda and their reasoning wasn’t all that sound. It starts in The Avengers, where SHIELD lies to Steve’s face about clean energy while secretly making HYDRA weapons. This is the first crack in Steve’s trust towards the established power systems. The second is when the Security Council fires a nuke at Manhattan, at their own civil population. That is the second crack. The next one comes in CA:TWS. Already at the beginning Fury withheld mission parameters from him, and we can see how pissed Steve is that people are not telling him everything he (thinks he) needs to know. His trust is completely shattered when it turns out SHIELD was corrupted from the very beginning. HYDRA has grown inside Shield from the start, and it turns out for Steve that even the organization with the hidden agenda has even MORE hidden agendas. I think we can say that Steve worked for SHIELD because it is the only organization he marginally trusts (and knows), and he only continues to trust them after The Avengers is probably because _they_ weren’t the ones who fired the nuke and they came clean to him when he confronted them with the hidden HYDRA weapons.

So Steve’s skepticism towards established governments and organizations is justified. What he doesn’t seem to understand is, that even he himself has a hidden agenda: Bucky. Rumlow is right by saying that, whenever Bucky is mentioned, Steve’s brain does a full stop and everything else loses importance. So by saying that he can’t trust governments with hidden agendas to give the commands, he is a hypocrite, because he himself has a hidden agenda himself that he tries to protect and fulfill. Because not only does he want to protect Bucky, but he also wants to neutralize the threat the additional Winter Soldiers in Siberia pose, something he doesn’t really tell anybody about who doesn’t necessarily have to know about it. And Tony obviously isn’t somebody who needs to know in Steve’s opinion. The thing he so despises in other – the secret keeping, the lies, the hidden agendas – are all things he does himself through the length of CA:CW. But we get to that again later.

This is actually a reoccurring theme in comics; it’s a thing that especially authorities like the police criticized after WW2 about the way they are depicted in comics. The Lone Hero, most of the time some kind of vigilante who acts outside of the law, defeats the bad guys and lets the government, military and police look bad. People feared that especially children would read those comics and disregard local authority, because _obviously_ they are completely incompetent, and why should children even listen to them?

And that’s exactly what Steve does! After the UN bombing in Vienna every evidence they had at that time led to Bucky being the culprit. We, as the viewers, know that something else is going on and that it wasn’t Bucky who planted the bomb, but the characters in the movie don’t know what we know. They only have the means and knowledge given to them, and, like I said, the evidence points towards Bucky. And so the police, no, more than the police, the fucking GSG9, a German special ops team, goes to apprehend the man who bombed the UN in Vienna. And what does Steve do? He decides that they are not good enoughnd that he can do better and sweeps in himself, verifying everybody’s worst fears and complains to be true. Like Tony said later in the movie, Steve’s actions prove that something like the Accords is necessary, because obviously Steve knows no boundaries. No matter what Steve claims, acting the way he did wasn’t the best for everybody and he was following his own agenda: saving Bucky. The only one profiting from his actions was Bucky, nobody else.

Then comes a time of calm, of conversation and of diplomacy, where Tony and Steve have a long overdue conversation. And Tony brings out the pens e found in his attic (?). But what do these pens symbolize? Tony said that they were used to sign the Lend-Lease Bill, but what does this have to do with the story? What does this Bill contribute? They could have chosen any other Bill or even a Peace treaty that those pens could have signed, but they chose this specific Bill. Why?

This Bill basically allowed Roosevelt to continue his own agenda – involving America in WW2 – while still acting in the boundaries of the law. By loaning and not selling the UK weapons and supplies he acts in the parameters set by his own government while still helping those who need it. It is symbolic to the Accords and Tony’s role in it. He signed the Accord because he thinks it’s the right thing to do, because his own actions (Ultron for example) show that even Superheroes need regulations. They can’t just run around and do as they please without any kind of consequences. In Lagos Cap and his team did their thing, and when people got hurt and died they just left again like “Well, shit happens life goes on”. A normal human being wouldn’t have been able to get away with something like that, and Superheroes shouldn’t be an exception.

No. Tony signed the Accords to take up responsibility for his action, but he isn’t delusional. He knows Ross. In the after Credit scene in The Incredible Hulk we see him talking to Ross. He knows that guy and what to expect. But Tony is a clever dude. He signed the Accords, but he is also manipulating them to suit himself and what he wants to accomplish. It sounds shifty, but so does Steve with his “the safest hands are our own” bullshit. Tony acts in the parameters set by the Accords, just like Roosevelt acted in the parameters set by the American Government and Congress, while still working towards their own ultimate goals.

_That_ is what those pens symbolize, the acting in set rules while having the freedom to follow your own morals. A practical example for this is Wanda’s confinement. Many may shout “Tony imprisoned her!”, but what do you expect? She’s an illegal immigrant without any kind of legal papers, an ex-member of HYDRA, helped Ultron, and got some people in Lagos killed. Do people really think that all those things don’t have consequences? Do they really think that she can get away with all of those things with a simple “Oops, my bad”? It was either house arrest in a comfortable environment, her own _home_ , with all its luxury like privacy, TV, Internet, fitness facilities, and all alone with the guy she has a crush on, or being imprisoned in a cell with a straightjacket and a collar. Tony acted in the parameters of the Accords, but he managed to manipulate them according to his will by having Wanda in confinement, but still giving her luxury and a certain kind of freedom and amenity. Not to forget that Steve didn’t even think to ask about Wanda. Only when Tony brought her up did he care to think what is going on with her. Another evidence is that, at the moment, Steve is single-mindedly focused on Bucky and nobody else, no matter their (maybe shitty) situation. With those pens Tony subtly tells Steve that he can still follow his own goals and still keep his integrity and follow his own morals while still complying with the law, just like Tony has done with Wanda.

But all of this goes right past Steve. All he says concerning the Lend-Lease Bill is that it brought America closer towards war. And again he acts like a hypocrite. Wasn’t it Steve who applied for enlistment through all of New York and even New Jersey so that he can participate in said warWasn’t it Steve who said that bullies weren’t allowed to remain in power? Wasn’t it Steve who fought the Good Fight by punching Hitler in the face?  As much as WW1 was a senseless bloodshed, the Second World War was, in a way, necessary. People like Hitler weren’t allowed to remain in power. They weren’t allowed to achieve world domination. And to be frank, it wasn’t really America that stood in Hitler’s way. It was Churchill and the UK. They were the only ones standing in Hitler’s way of completely controlling Europe. Not America, not France, not Russia (who were Hitler’s allies), it was the UK. As much as Roosevelt wanted to participate in the war and help his British friends, he couldn’t. The American people didn’t allow it; his congress didn’t allow it. The only thing he could do was trick the laws and his government as much as he could to support Churchill as much as he could.

By not only forgetting that, but by also first thinking about the (somewhat) negative implication those pens brought up – America joining WW2 – Steve not only disregards the sacrifices the UK brought during that very lonely year where they were the only ones standing in Hitler’s way, but he also insinuates that it was wrong from Roosevelt to sign this Bill. We can compare it to his own situation with the Accords. He thinks that signing those Accords is a mistake, something that will tear the Avengers apart, something that will get them into trouble, something that could be avoided by _not signing_. But at the same time he betrays everything he stands for in that sentence. By implying that (in a way) joining the war was a mistake he betrays his former believes that you have to stand up to bullies, that you can’t let somebody like Hitler or HYDRA continue as they are. At the same time he thinks that he is honoring those very same ideals with not signing the Accords, because he thinks that the people who support those Accords are the real bullies. But that is, like Rhodey so wonderfully put it, “dangerously arrogant”. To think you are the only person in the world to be in the right and everybody else’s opinion and reasoning is wrong, _is indeed_ dangerously arrogant.

But why can’t he make those compromises? What is it that stops him from thinking this through properly? You know the Answer. It starts with a B and ends with an –ucky.

Steve has a certain picture of Bucky, and that picture sometimes doesn’t align with reality. For him, Bucky is his friend, his partner in crime, his brother in everything but blood. They grew up together, fought together, they had each others’ back from the moment they became friends. The problem is that this version of Bucky doesn’t exist anymore, at least not in the beginning. Since the end of CA:TWS Bucky was nobody. He wasn’t Steve’s long lost friend, but he also wasn’t the Winter Soldier. He was nobody, had no identity, no memories, everything that makes a person who theyre has been erased by HYDRA, over and over again. But Steve saw him and only saw his long lost brother, when in reality he wasn’t. He was nobody. But throughout the movie Steve tries to protect this friend, even during a time where he wasn’t this friend, not until after Bucky went on a rampage and Steve knocked his head real hard (neuronal recalibrating). Only after that did Bucky really become Bucky. But before that he was the (ex-)HYDRA assassin who bombed the UN. Steve, of course, doesn’t believe that, because he has faith in Bucky and knows he would never do that, that he only ever became the ‘villain’ because HYDRA kidnapped him and brainwashed him over and over again. And Steve is right, Bucky wouldn’t do that. But Nobody-the-ex-Hydra-assassin might. In theory of course, the viewer knows that he wasn’t the culprit, but like I said above, the characters can’t know that because they don’t have all the information the viewer has. The point is that Steve expects Bucky to think and act in a certain way that he is familiar with and that he knows and can predict, but at that certain point of the story that is not who Bucky is. Only after he regains some part of his memories and part of himself, are those predictions Steve made true. Before that Steve predicted the behavior and steps of a different person, not of Nobody-the-ex-Hydra-assassin.

Steve’s predictions get verified then. He always knew that it wasn’t Bucky who planted the bomb but somebody else, that something more sinister is going on, but he didn’t predict that out of empiric evidence but because of a personal, subjective opinion. But now, with Bucky regaining part of his memory, with an actual clue that there is a very real and very big threat on the horizon that could very well make HYDRA or whoever it is take control of those additional Winter Soldiers a very real contester for world domination, what does Steve do? HE KEEPS IT TO HIMSELF!!!

Before CA:CW Steve had a real problem with authorities keeping information from him, even accused the UN and 117 Nations of being corrupt, and here he is, doing the exact same thing! It already started in CA:TWS where Steve found out that HYDRA killed Howard Stark and opted not to tell Tony about it. In Age of Ultron Steve accused Tony of keeping too many secrets from the team, while at the same time he is the one who keeps a pretty big secret from Tony. This is already were it started, this is where Steve starts abandoning his own ideals. He demands honesty and transparency from everybody, because that is how democracy works, but at the same time he doesn’t offer any of that himself.

Steve believes the worst of other people – probably because he was told that he himself was inherently good, which would imply that everybody else wasn’t good enough and thus he was better than them– and in CA:CW he also believes the worst of Tony. He doesn’t tell Tony about this new threat because he thinks he wouldn’t believe him, that he will try to stop Steve from doing the right thing, from stopping those Winter Soldiers. And in the end he feels vindicated (again), because Tony _does_ try to stop him, but not because of the reasons Steve predicts, but because Tony can only act on the information he has, which means that, for Tony, Steve is trying to help Bucky escape and hide him until he can clear his name. That is all the information Tony has, and he cannot act differently because Steve is _withholding information_. And the airstrip of an airport when tensions are high and people are preparing for battle is probably not the best time or place to discuss this new potential threat. It’s not like they had hours upon hours of time to meet up or talk over the phone about those Winter Soldiers… Oh! Wait!!! THEY DID!!! You cannot tell me that Steve had time to fly two (completely uninvolved) parties from as far as San Francisco (!) over to Germany, but at the same time didn’t have the time to tell Tony (at least over the phone) that there are five killing machines about to be released in Siberia. Tony would have at least had somebody check that out, or would have even gone himself to take a look at those potential Winter Soldiers.

Some may complain now: “Tony was off collecting his own little army! How was he supposed to reach him? Steve had to defend himself so that he could go and stop those Winter Soldiers!” Yes, Tony did collect an army. Why? Because he has seen what Steve was willing to do in Bucharesthen people started to become a ‘threat’ to Bucky. He has gotten 36 hours to bring Steve and Bucky in, and he knew that he could only do that properly and with as little violence as possible when he could overpower them. Spider-Man’s task for example was only to web them up so that they could collect them later on. Tony only wanted to stop a wanted fugitive from escaping and stop Steve before the situation could become any worse for him because Steve was helping and abetting an escaped fugitive. Tony couldn’t really know that Steve was collecting allies and a small army himself.

And then, of course, everything goes to shit. Rhodey is paralyzed, Steve and Bucky escaped to god knows where, half of the Avengers is in prison. Of course they blame Tony for that (I’m looking at you Clint and Scott), but let me ask you: WHAT DO YOU THINK WOULD HAPPEN??? You probably saw in the News what happened in Vienna, that Bucky was probably the culprit, that you were basically helping a prime suspect for a terroristic bombing at the fucking UN escape, and you thought that didn’t have consequences?!?!? That’s the exact reason why the Accordsre necessary. Team Cap thinks they are right, just like Steve does, that they were fighting The Good Fight and that this justifies their action. But that’s not true. They helped a wanted fugitive and – as far as the world knows – a wanted terrorist and destroyed an entire airport in the process. And they think they are going to get away with it.

It’s like with Wanda and the incident in Lagos: Steve made a mistake by getting distracted, Wanda moved in, but she didn’t have enough control of her power, too little training for a mission like that, and people died. And although it wasn’t her intention, and that she only wanted to help, it still doesn’t change that she and the Avengers made a mistake and people died because of it. There need to be regulations and consequences, or so-called ‘superheroes’ can do whatever they want in the name of the greater good without reporting to anybody but themselves. Tony is right with what he said, that “without rules we are no better than the bad guys”. Because if there are no rules, then ‘superheroes’an destroy an entire airport or, like in Age of Ultron, half a city, and face no kind of consequences. Again, Rhodey’s comment about being “dangerously arrogant” comes to mind, and it fits wonderfully into the Raft scene as well. Both Clint and Scott act as if they were in the right and that their imprisonment is a huge injustice because they were fighting The Good Fight, and that they got imprisoned by no fault of their own (and what is it with Marvel’s fathers that they just abandon their kids in a heartbeat? Oh yes Clint, retiring and spending more time with your family by going golfing and water skiing is _so boring_ ). They are the ones the Accords try to protect the world from, because they have gone out of control.

The only one who acts reasonable and logical and like he has even a stint of common sense is Sam. When Tony talks to him and tells him that new evidence has come up and that he now knows that Bucky was framed and that something else is going on, Sam tells him everything. It has basically taken two days for the allegations against Bucky to be proven false. Tony isn’t on some kind of vendetta, a hardliner of the Accords that can’t play with anybody acting outside of them (we have already concluded that above with the pens and the Lend-Lease Bill). He knows what he has to do so that Ross and anybody else who might be out for blood doesn’t get a hint that he is about to meet Captain America and The Winter Soldier. We see that Tony can compromise and prioritize. He is going now to help Steve and Bucky neutralize the other Winter Soldiers so that Tony can regain Steve’s trust he seemed to have lost when Tony signed the Accords, and so that they can have time later to discuss every other issue they have without the threat of world destruction.

And, again, everything goes to shit. Bucky become Zemo’s instrument with which he can tear the Avengers apart. And Steve lets him.

By keeping the truth about Howards (and Maria’s) death a secret ‘to save Tony the heartache and spare his feelings’ and by being to single-mindedly focused on Bucky, Steve has brought by the destruction of the Avengers as they knew it. He may claim that he has kept that knowledge a secret to spare Tony’s feelings, but in reality he was protecting Bucky once again. Again Steve probably feels vindicated when Tony attacked Bucky in grief and rage. He has probably predicted such a reaction from the moment he found out Howard was murdered by HYDRA, probably by Bucky, probably predicted that Tony would try to find the murderer of his parents and make him pay. And again, Steve expects the worst of Tony. What was Tony supposed to do? His parents’ murderer was standing right there, right in front of him while he just saw this very same man murder his fucking parents on video! And Steve, somebody who Tony thought of as a friend, was protecting him. How many other people has Bucky killed? How many other people was Steve denying their justice by protecting a single man? I know – and Tony probably knows, too – that it wasn’t really Bucky’s fault, that he got brainwashed and exploited as a weapon. But in that moment, freshly overcome with grief and rage, Tony can’t see reason. Just like Steve loses any kind of objectivity when Bucky is in danger, it’s the same with Tony when the people he loves are in danger (like when he builds the Iron Man army in IM3 to ‘protect what he can’t live without’, or earlier when Rhodey fell out of the sky and appeared dead). Tony loses any kind of objectivity and reason, and after the break-up with Pepper and Rhodey’s fall he is at his breaking point. He has enough.

But all of that following fight might have been avoided if Steve had just come to Tony and told him that Howard’s death wasn’t an accident but that HYDRA had him murdered. Maybe then Tony might have been able to vent his anger and rage into the right direction, especially when you think about that between CA:TWS and Age of Ultron the Avengers were basically raiding one HYDRA facility after the other. That would have been a good way for Tony to make those suckers pay for the death of his parents. But no. Steve didn’t tell Tony, even dares to excuse his behavior and secret keeping, something he oh so despised in others like SHIELD or Natasha or Fury.

Transparency and the sharing of information are the foundations on which a good democracy is build, so that people can make educated decisions, so that people can regard every aspect of a situation. But Steve denies Tony that right over and over again. By his unwillingness to compromise and meet other people halfway, by always expecting the worst of everybody else, he became the very thing he fought against: despots who only follow their own moral code and agendas. He demands the sharing of information from everybody else while he is not forthcoming himself. He criticizes others for following their own moral code and doing what they think is right while he does the exact same thing. He demands others to be reasonable while he himself is dangerously compromised and biased. Captain America is the symbol of freedom and democracy, the right for people to voice their opinions and their right to tell others ‘No’, but by ignoring their voices – the voices of 117 nations – out of more or less personal reasons, by withholding (vital) information and not offering transparency, he is betraying everything Captain America stands for.

And I think Steve knows that.

Tony’s quip ‘My father made that shield, you don’t deserve it’ is almost pitiful in the given situation, but that sentence has a far deeper connotation. Howard has been Steve’s friend, just like Steve has been Tony’s friend, and by protecting his murderer, the murderer of Tony’s parents, he was betraying them in a way. At the same time Tony indirectly tells him that he isn’t Captain America anymore, that he has become someone not worthy of that shield and the title of Captain America that goes along with it. And I think that Steve knows and realizes that. That final fight against Tony, when Tony tells him that he has been Steve’s friend, too, I think that was the moment when Steve realized that he has fucked up. That he has become so biased and compromised that he disregarded everything and everyone else. But he couldn’t stop anymore. Through his mistakes Tony is about to kill Bucky, _his_ Bucky, and he has already gone too far in protecting his brother than to stop now, even at Tony’s costs. At the end Steve could have been petty or all righteous and say that he was Captain America no matter what so he is keeping that shield, but I think that he has gained at least a little bit of self-reflection and realized that what he did wasn’t okay, that he made some mistakes down the line, and that he can’t go back now, at least not for a while. So he lets that shield drop because he doesn’t deserve it.

So he drops that shield, because he knows that he isn’t worthy of it, not after everything what happened. And it wasn’t Tony who ripped the team apart by signing the Accords; it also wasn’t really Steve who ripped it apart by prioritizing Bucky above everything else, but it were the two of them together. Tony (though by no fault of his own; he couldn’t guess that Bucky killed his parents, and his reaction was entirely human) and Steve (by keeping all of this a secret and by withholding important information) gave Zemo the ammunition and the instruments to pit the avengers against each other.

But Steve has shown throughout the movie how he is unable to think clearly when Bucky is involved, how he can’t analyze the situation properly when somebody just so much as mentions his name, how Steve is willing to break the law and get in the way of proper law enforcement to help him, how he prioritizes him over everbody else in his team. Steve is unable to accept other’s opinions and decisions when they are opposite of his own or deviate from it. He is unable to submit to any kind of governmental oversight, even if it’s a humanitarian one like the UN. He can’t accept that his own opinion may differ and may not be in accordance to popular and political opinion and that some countries may not want him and his involvement in his country. He ignores them and continues to do his own thing, breaking the law, getting innocent people in danger, being responsible for the death of innocent people, and being overall subjective and compromised in his decision making. He overall disregards ideals he stands for (freedom from oppression, democracy, free will, exchange of information to make educated decision), and by doing so he casts away his title of Captain America.

What is left is just a kid from Brooklyn. Not a symbol, not a hero, not even a soldier, just another human being.


End file.
